CHAPTER I

WHICH DEALS WITH ORIGINS

Faithfully to relate how Eliphalet Hopper came try St. Louis is to betray
no secret. Mr. Hopper is wont to tell the story now, when his
daughter-in-law is not by; and sometimes he tells it in her presence, for
he is a shameless and determined old party who denies the divine right of
Boston, and has taken again to chewing tobacco.

When Eliphalet came to town, his son's wife, Mrs: Samuel D. (or S. Dwyer
as she is beginning to call herself), was not born. Gentlemen of Cavalier
and Puritan descent had not yet begun to arrive at the Planters' House,
to buy hunting shirts and broad rims, belts and bowies, and depart
quietly for Kansas, there to indulge in that; most pleasurable of
Anglo-Saxon pastimes, a free fight. Mr. Douglas had not thrown his bone
of Local Sovereignty to the sleeping dogs of war.

To return to Eliphalet's arrival,--a picture which has much that is
interesting in it. Behold the friendless boy he stands in the prow of the
great steamboat 'Louisiana' of a scorching summer morning, and looks with
something of a nameless disquiet on the chocolate waters of the
Mississippi. There have been other sights, since passing Louisville,
which might have disgusted a Massachusetts lad more. A certain deck on
the 'Paducah', which took him as far as Cairo, was devoted to cattle
--black cattle. Eliphalet possessed a fortunate temperament. The deck was